There was something in the whole appearance of the
captain that prepossessed me in his favor. He
was of the middle size, well made and well set; and
a military frock of foreign cut, that had seen service,
gave him a look of compactness. His countenance
was frank, open, and engaging; well browned by the
sun, and had something of a French expression.
He had a pleasant black eye, a high forehead, and,
while he kept his hat on, the look of a man in the
jocund prime of his days; but the moment his head
was uncovered, a bald crown gained him credit for a
few more years than he was really entitled to.

Being extremely curious, at the time, about every
thing connected with the Far West, I addressed numerous
questions to him. They drew from him a number
of extremely striking details, which were given with
mingled modesty and frankness; and in a gentleness
of manner, and a soft tone of voice, contrasting singularly
with the wild and often startling nature of his themes.
It was difficult to conceive the mild, quiet-looking
personage before you, the actual hero of the stirring
scenes related.

In the course of three or four months, happening to
be at the city of Washington, I again came upon the
captain, who was attending the slow adjustment of
his affairs with the War Department. I found him
quartered with a worthy brother in arms, a major in
the army. Here he was writing at a table, covered
with maps and papers, in the centre of a large barrack
room, fancifully decorated with Indian arms, and trophies,
and war dresses, and the skins of various wild animals,
and hung round with pictures of Indian games and ceremonies,
and scenes of war and hunting. In a word, the
captain was beguiling the tediousness of attendance
at court, by an attempt at authorship; and was rewriting
and extending his travelling notes, and making maps
of the regions he had explored. As he sat at
the table, in this curious apartment, with his high
bald head of somewhat foreign cast, he reminded me
of some of those antique pictures of authors that
I have seen in old Spanish volumes.

The result of his labors was a mass of manuscript,
which he subsequently put at my disposal, to fit it
for publication and bring it before the world.
I found it full of interesting details of life among
the mountains, and of the singular castes and races,
both white men and red men, among whom he had sojourned.
It bore, too, throughout, the impress of his character,
his bonhommie, his kindliness of spirit, and his susceptibility
to the grand and beautiful.

That manuscript has formed the staple of the following
work. I have occasionally interwoven facts and
details, gathered from various sources, especially
from the conversations and journals of some of the
captain’s contemporaries, who were actors in
the scenes he describes. I have also given it
a tone and coloring drawn from my own observation,
during an excursion into the Indian country beyond
the bounds of civilization; as I before observed,
however, the work is substantially the narrative of
the worthy captain, and many of its most graphic passages
are but little varied from his own language.